Front cover
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
Redguides
for Business Leaders
Barry Baker
Jonathan Collins
Connie Walberg
Dan Weber
Reduce time to value when creating a
passenger rail reservation system
Extend IT assets value with IBM Travel and
Transportation Industry Framework
Lower ownership cost with a workload
optimized foundation
Executive overview
IBM® Passenger Rail Reservation Service (PRRS) is a workload optimized offering that
consists of a set of industry-specific accelerators and middleware. It can be used by a
passenger rail company, systems integrator (SI), or independent software vendor (ISV) to
accelerate the time to value in the creation of a highly scalable and available rail reservation
platform. IBM PRRS is built using a service-oriented approach and can be a critical
component of an instrumented, intelligent, and interconnected railroad.
IBM PRRS provides flexible core capabilities to manage foundational components of a rail
reservation system, such as inventory, availability, and reservations. Rather than using a
collection of general purpose, low level system and database technologies, you can use these
foundational services provided by IBM PRRS as the building blocks of your reservation
system. These services allow you to focus attention and resources on providing higher level
capabilities, such as yield management, multichannel sales, and customer self-service
solutions, which are more tightly aligned with and responsive to the ever changing needs of
your business.
IBM PRRS is also part of IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework, which provides
capabilities in five key business domains that are specific to passenger rail. IBM PRRS is part
of the Reservation System Modernization domain.
For passenger rail providers, the top industry challenges are centered on capacity and
congestion, operational efficiency, reliability, structural and competition issues, and safety and
security. With the introduction of IBM PRRS, railroads can focus on tackling these significant
challenges, knowing that a key operational system (their reservation system) has a
foundation that is workload optimized, flexible, and tailored to their industry based on decades
of knowledge and experience.
This IBM Redguide™ publication explains the business value of IBM Passenger Rail
Reservation System. It highlights key aspects of the architecture and how it enhances IBM
Travel and Transportation Industry Framework.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2010. All rights reserved.
1
Business need
Passenger rail systems have been in existence for over a century, and the focus has been on
managing the use of seats on the train. This approach was adequate because most rail
systems are operated as a state sponsored service with little regard for customer service.
Events have occurred in recent decades to change the focus and the business model. One
such event was the advent of high speed rail. With high speed rail, rail service is much more
competitive with air travel, even at distances of 500 KM or more. In many cases, the
downtown-to-downtown service of high speed rail can be faster than airlines given the travel
time to and from airports and long security lines.
To compete with airlines, rail operators need to match airline services, such as allowing
customers to book a complete journey ahead of time, select seats, and connect through
various distribution channels. Many rail operators are moving to eliminate the paper ticket in
favor of electronic tickets (e-tickets) or ticketless travel.
When demand outstrips supply, having more knowledge of the passenger and their travel
habits can improve capacity planning and increase security. These and other factors are often
cited by governments as they continue to direct more funding into passenger rail projects.
Today, many rail operators have created and supported their own full service passenger
reservation solutions. Many rail operators support simple ticketing solutions. Both groups
have expressed a desire to have a more common approach to handling passenger
reservations, which is a natural progression because, unlike airlines, most rail operators do
not compete with each other and are more willing to share technology to lower costs and to
improve service. However, recent regulatory changes in the European Union allow rail
operators to compete with each other on the same routes.
For rail providers that have existing reservation solutions, many find the solutions to be too
large, monolithic, and rigid, making it difficult to enhance the solutions in a timely manner
when responding to changing business requirements. Instead, they are seeking a path toward
modernizing this mission critical system to better meet the needs of their customers.
Although there are a couple of approaches to modernizing these systems, consensus is
forming around an evolutionary approach based on service-oriented architecture (SOA)
because of its associated risk reduction and incremental investment approach. In the end, the
goal is a system that is more flexible and responsive to changing business requirements,
which will enable rail providers to focus their dollars and resources on applications that add
business value and not on maintenance of low level transaction and database components for
managing inventory, availability, and reservations. For rail providers without existing
reservation solutions, the challenge is to create a complete reservation system, from the
lowest level foundational capabilities such as managing inventory, availability, and
reservations, to implementing value added capabilities aligned with how they want to run their
business, serve their customers, and interact with partners.
Introduction to IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
In response to the business needs for both new reservation systems and existing reservation
systems that desire modernization, IBM has created the IBM Passenger Rail Reservation
Service (PRRS), which is a unique offering in the marketplace. IBM PRRS is not meant to be
a complete passenger rail reservation system but rather is a collection of core capabilities that
can be dynamically combined and used to help create a complete reservation system. It is
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IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
also flexible enough to be able to integrate with a current reservation system in a number of
ways to provide an evolutionary approach to modernization.
IBM PRRS includes the following core categories of functionality:
򐂰 Inventory management that provides a consistent view of the available inventory
򐂰 Shopping and selling that includes transactions to support the shopping for, booking, and
modification of journeys
򐂰 Reservation system optimizations that provide rail specific optimizations for tasks, such as
seat assignment, automatic reaccommodation, and booking cancellation due to
non-payment
򐂰 Flexible selling scheme that provides the ability to dynamically change how you sell your
inventory
򐂰 Rail operations support for transactions to support rail operations (for example, schedule
change, suspend particular stations, and more)
IBM PRRS is designed to support the creation of modern, flexible passenger rail reservations
systems by employing an SOA approach for its design. This approach means that the
function provided by IBM PRRS is accessible through SOA-based messaging built on Web
services and XML, providing choice and ease of integration with other platforms that make up
a complete reservation system.
This architectural approach also enables you to select the right platforms for the various
components that go into the creation of a complete passenger rail reservation system. For
example, the existing services in IBM PRRS v1.1.1 are designed specifically for the IBM
System z® platform and the IBM z/Transaction Processing Facility (z/TPF) operating system,
based on the characteristics of the IBM PRRS workload. This design does not mean that your
complete reservation system must be implemented on the IBM System z platform. Nor does it
mean that future capabilities provided by IBM PRRS are provided only for IBM System z and
IBM z/TPF. With IBM PRRS, the only requirement that must be met by complimentary
platforms is that they need to support open, standards-based messaging protocols such as
Web services.
Designing IBM PRRS using SOA principles also enables it to be well positioned to
interoperate with emerging global passenger rail reservation system messaging standards. In
particular, IBM is currently engaged with the cross-travel industry consortia and standards
organization, Open Travel Alliance (OTA), working with key members of the rail industry in
defining a set of rail schema messages to support seamless connectivity between passenger
rail reservation systems and various distribution/partner channels.
Furthermore, IBM is chairing the effort in Open Travel Alliance to define a core rail reservation
service model that will simplify the creation of value-added business functions on top of core
reservation capabilities like those provided by IBM PRRS. This approach can help to protect
your investment in a solution based on IBM PRRS while also expanding the market for
complimentary solutions.
The next section includes a summary of the business value of IBM PRRS, its inclusion in the
IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework, and an introduction to its capabilities.
3
Business value
IBM PRRS is a unique offering in the marketplace and provides unique value. With IBM
PRRS, passenger rail providers can meet increased capacity demand, more rapidly support
new customer interaction patterns and self-service capabilities, and transform IT systems to
be more responsive and flexible. Passenger rail providers can also better compete with other
transportation alternatives by taking advantage of middleware and solutions that are built
around service orientation, providing greater ease of integration and higher degrees of
responsive to changes in the business environment.
Because IBM PRRS provides a set of prebuilt core capabilities that are common to passenger
rail reservation systems, the amount of effort that is required to create and maintain a robust,
scalable solution is reduced significantly. Instead of devoting resources to maintaining
low-level, core capability (such as managing inventory and reservations), as a passenger rail
provider, you can choose to use resources to develop innovative and value added capabilities
that can better differentiate what you provide to your customers.
Also, in prescribing a clear delineation between core services and higher level business
process and flow processing, IBM PRRS introduces a modern SOA-based design for
passenger rail reservation systems. IBM PRRS is flexible enough to be introduced into an
existing ticketing or reservation system in a number of ways, such that you can evolve to a
modern architecture versus taking a drastic, high risk, “rip-and-replace” approach to
modernization.
In short, CIOs and IT executives for passenger rail providers are challenged to simultaneously
reduce costs while also creating a reservation system that can meet their current and future
needs in an increasing competitive market. The capabilities and design of IBM PRRS makes
it well suited to help you meet these challenges.
Beyond the core challenges met by IBM PRRS, it is also important to mention that IBM PRRS
is part of a broader IBM focus in supporting railways by providing the following features:
򐂰 Advanced information management
򐂰 Analytics
򐂰 Automation
It also provides integration of processes across the various business areas that constitute
railways through the IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework.
4
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
IBM PPRS and the IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework
The IBM Industry Frameworks (Figure 1) combine market leading technology capabilities with
prebuilt solution accelerators, best practices, and implementation patterns that can provide
speed, flexibility, and choice while reducing cost and risk.
A framework provides:
• An approach to align technology
with business needs
I BM industry sol utions
Business partner sol utions
IBM Industry Frameworks
Industry- Specific Acceler ators
Servers, storage, network
•Re-usable implementation
patter ns to lower risk
•Built and integrated with IBM
middleware software
•Solution accelerators to speed
deployment
•Support for adoption of open and
industry standards
•A choice of business applications
from IBM business partners
Figure 1 IBM Industry Frameworks
In May of 2010, IBM added a framework specific to the travel and transportation industry, to
its growing list of frameworks, as a sign of its ongoing commitment to the travel and
transportation industry. The IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework is a
combination of IBM software products and assets that together with the IBM experience and
subject matter expertise provide a foundation for a list of solutions for the rail industry. This
framework can enable railroads to address the needs of complex sales and delivery channels,
optimize passenger and freight operations, and better manage extensive assets to deliver on
the promise of a more efficient, safe and secure freight and traveler experience.
The framework is open standards-based and built on common software building blocks and
IBM middleware. It is designed to support advanced information management, analytics,
optimization, and integration projects in the five business domains illustrated in Figure 2.
5
Multi-Channel
Sales and
Service
Operations
Control
Systems
Reservation
System
Modernization
Integration
Opti mization
Analytics
Collaboration
Security
Resiliency
Asset
Optimization
Safety, Security,
and Surveillance
Figure 2 IBM Travel and Transportation Industry Framework domains
IBM PRRS is a core asset of the Reservation System Modernization domain of the IBM Travel
and Transportation Industry Framework. Together with a growing list of other framework
assets, it provides a foundation for the development of complete rail reservation and
distribution solutions from IBM, IBM business partners, and ISVs. As part of the asset and
solution development, IBM is also driving the continued enhancement of existing industry
standards and the creation of new ones through its work with the Open Travel Alliance.
Service-oriented architecture and passenger rail
As discussed earlier, passenger rail providers face the following challenges:
򐂰 Meet increased capacity demand, which increases congestion and amplifies infrastructure
limitations
򐂰 Support new customer interaction patterns and demands for better self service
capabilities
򐂰 Transform their IT systems to be more responsive and flexible to meet the changing needs
of the business
򐂰 Deal with increasing competition and structural limitations
Railroad providers need to tackle these difficult issues while providing a safe and secure form
of transportation. Given this set of challenges and the existing obstacles that have existed
during the 100 year history of the passenger rail industry, the best approach for
transformation is one that is evolutionary or incremental in nature. The mission critical aspect
of services that are provided by passenger rail providers makes any immediate and
significant approaches to modernization risky. Therefore, a transformation approach built
around service orientation provides an evolutionary means to modernize that can take
advantage of existing assets, reducing both your costs and risks.
6
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
A new services-oriented foundation can be established that is standards-based, provides
greater ease of integration internally and externally, and is responsive to the changes in the
operators’ business processes. This approach provides greater alignment between your
business and IT and can drive down cycle times as well as development and maintenance
costs through effective reuse of existing assets.
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service architecture
IBM PRRS follows a service-oriented architectural model. It provides a set of core low-level
services which are the building blocks for creating a passenger rail reservation system that is
reliable, scalable, and highly available.
Figure 3 on page 8 introduces a subset of a passenger rail reservation system that exploits
the core functionality that is provided by IBM PRRS. At the top right of Figure 3, the box
labeled composite business services (CBS) represents the higher level functionality that
defines how the passenger rail provider’s customers, partners, and employees will interact
with the overall reservation system. The CBS layer is where a passenger rail provider
implements the services that they want to provide to customers and how they want to provide
them.
Figure 3 also shows a common high level process flow provided by reservation systems,
including shopping, booking, buying, pre-journey, journey, and post journey. Although this flow
is considered common and a best practice, a significant amount of differentiation can be
achieved by different rail providers at this layer. For example, a passenger rail provider can
provide for shopping and booking of complete trips which span multiple modes of
transportation. The services provided at the CBS layer are ideal for deployment using modern
application server and process server offerings such as the IBM WebSphere® Application
Server and the IBM WebSphere Process Server. The services should be designed to be
responsive to rapidly changing business needs, through the exploitation of business rules
management systems offerings such as the IBM WebSphere ILOG® JRules.
Next, at the top of Figure 3, there are boxes that represent the various sales and service
channels that a rail provider can support. For example, kiosks, mobile applications, web or
Internet applications, call center support clients, and more. A strategy that is recommended
as part of this architecture is to strive to embed as much of the competitive capabilities as
possible in the CBS layer as opposed to in the various supported sales and service channels.
This approach can aid in reducing costs, increasing responsiveness to changing
requirements, and creating a common and seamless user experience across all service
channels.
7
Sales & Ser vice Channels
Open Service Messaging
Component Business Services
Shoppin g
Booking
Buying
Prejou rney
Journey
Po stjourney
Manifest
Fare Lookup
Reservations
Availability
Inventory
Schedules
Open Service Model
IBM Passenger
Rail Reservation
Service
Platfor m
Figure 3 IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service Architecture
The main interfaces used to interact with IBM PRRS are a set of IBM PRRS specific
SOA-based Web service messages that are exchanged between the CBS and IBM PRRS.
These interfaces do not put any special integration requirements on the platform that is used
by the CBS layer.
IBM continues to work with and support various industry-specific standards bodies, and
namely the Open Travel Alliance for passenger rail. Recently the International Union of
Railroads (UIC), a predominantly European focused organization, and the OTA entered into
an agreement to work closely on upcoming rail message and service model specifications
(depicted by Open Service Messaging and Open Service Model, respectively, in Figure 3).
The work to create Open Service Messaging can help support inter-operable connectivity
between passenger rail reservation systems and various distribution/partner channels. The
Open Service Model is intended to define a set of core reservation services to enable the
creation of complementary industry offerings and accelerate the modernization efforts of
existing reservation systems. The creation and adoption of passenger rail specific messaging
and service model standards will further protect investments in the CBS layer of passenger
rail reservation system.
Before taking a closer look at IBM PRRS details, it is important in the context of providing core
foundational services to discuss the bottom layer of Figure 3, which is the platform for which
the IBM PRRS was designed and optimized. The intention of IBM PRRS is to provide
passenger rail specific functional building blocks, saving the passenger rail provider the cost
of developing and maintaining such core functionality. This approach enables the rail provider
to focus on providing greater value and differentiation for their business.
An additional benefit of IBM PRRS is that you get this core capability optimized for a particular
platform, currently the IBM System z platform which provides high levels of qualities of
service. This combination provides faster time to market, scalability, high availability and
8
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
reliability, and greater price performance, because IBM has optimized the complete stack,
depicted under the Open Service Model in Figure 3.
Over the years, new forms of computing have emerged, and certainly more will follow, but
when looking at the architecture of an application or solution, it is easy to ascertain two
primary forms emerging or a combination of these forms:
򐂰 Centralized computing deployments
򐂰 Distributed computing deployments
Loosely defined, centralized computing deployments attempt to co-locate as much of a
solutions data and processing on a relatively small number of systems, which can drive up the
requirements (such as performance, capacity, and scalability) of each single system.
Alternatively, distributed computing attempts to partition the computing and data
requirements of a solution and deploy a relatively larger number of smaller systems, each
providing more discreet isolated capabilities, all working in concert to provide a complete
solution.
These two primary forms of computing have differing strengths and weaknesses for
supporting the different characteristics of the solution workloads. Ignoring or disregarding
these strengths and weaknesses will not necessarily mean failure for your solution but it will
likely mean that your solution is suboptimal. A suboptimal solution might be deemed
adequate in certain situations, especially when other factors are considered, such as time to
market. However, when you are building a complex mission critical solution, optimization is
essential at the foundational layers of your system, otherwise the solution might be limited
and fail to meet your longer term objectives.
IBM provides platforms across the computing spectrum and knows that one platform will not
meet everyone’s needs. Customers require a dynamic, scalable, and optimized infrastructure
that is tailored to their particular organization’s workloads. Based on decades of working
closely with customers who develop and use mission critical reservation systems, IBM sees a
centralized computing model as the starting point for creating an optimized solution based on
the characteristics of the data model, and its usage in reservation systems.
In short, reservation system data is not easily partitioned and is undergoing a high rate of
updates. In addition, the consistency of the data is critical to the business, all of these factors
combine to align with what a high performance centralized solution can provide. These
centralized computing concepts are explored further in IBM z/Transaction Processing Facility:
Overview and Enterprise Integration using SOA, REDP-4611.
9
IBM PRRS interfaces and components
IBM PRRS provides a set of core foundational services. Figure 4 depicts some of the
interfaces and components that it currently contains. The discussion that follows is a
high-level introduction to some of the capabilities.
Transactional
Operational
Management Services
Rail Service Messages
Manifest
Fare Lookup
Reservations
Availability
Inventory
Data Loading
ETL
Schedules
Open Service Model
IBM Passenger
Rail
Reservation
Service
Data
Extract
Rail Provider Data Model
Extensibility points
Web Service Interfaces
Connection to other reservation systems
IBM PRRS Data Model
Figure 4 IBM PRRS interfaces and components
Starting with the interfaces to IBM PRRS, to begin using the core services that are provided,
you must define the particulars of the target rail network, trains, and services that IBM PRRS
will manage. On the left side of Figure 4, the purple interfaces represent the specifics of the
data model and the format that is used by a particular passenger rail provider, including
information about the rail network graph, train schedules, fare quotes, car types, and stations
information.
This information needs to be first transformed into the data model format that IBM PRRS
uses, and then it can be loaded into an instance of IBM PRRS. Depending on the particulars
of each rail provider’s data model and where they maintain this information (for example,
some of this data might be maintained in an asset management solution such as the IBM
Maximo® offering), using an off-the-shelf extract, transform, and load (ETL) offering, such as
IBM InfoSphere™ DataStage® to manage and maintain your information, will likely
accelerate and reduce the ongoing costs of ensuring that the IBM PRRS installation is using
the most current data.
After the details of your passenger rail services are defined to IBM PRRS, it is ready to
provide low-level core capabilities, such as managing seat inventory and reservations and
supporting requests for seat availability and simple fare lookups. Each of these capabilities,
depicted in Figure 4 as red arrows, is exposed through a Web services interfaces (known as
Rail Service Messages) that are unique to IBM PRRS.
Seat availability and inventory control is a key capability that IBM PRRS provides and is the
core of all reservation systems. Flexibility in how seats are sold is a requirement if you are
interested in effectively managing specific outcomes such as the capacity of your trains,
revenue, and customer satisfaction. With IBM PRRS, this flexibility is provided through a
10
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
couple of different schemes that can be used together and that can be dynamically changed
to control how services get sold.
For example, in IBM PRRS, you can define physical seats on a train as being dedicated for a
particular use, such as for handicap or government official usage. The seats can be sold only
through a limited channel or personnel type, or you can define rules based allotments of your
inventory based on things such as sales or partner channel, usage, class of customer, market
range (origin and destination pair), and so forth. You can also combine these methods to sell
inventory and, by using the latter method, to manage the selling of the majority of inventory.
You can perform tasks, such as allotting a guaranteed minimum number of seats that can be
sold through a travel agency partner or setting a limit on the number of student discount seats
that are available for a particular market. In addition, you can establish these various selling
approaches up front and adjust them in real time based on output from a yield management
system or for some unforeseen business event. IBM PRRS provides a great deal of flexibility
and control in how your inventory is sold, allowing you to continually keep your reservation
system aligned with how you want to do business.
IBM PRRS allows for the creation and management of reservations using the common travel
industry concept known as the Passenger Name Record (PNR), which contains the itinerary
for a passenger or group of passengers traveling together. Through the Rail Services
Message interface, complete trip itinerary reservations are made through booking requests
which have the affect of moving available seats out of inventory and storing them in the PNR
for a trip.
The PNR can contain bookings for multiple people and also bookings for journeys that consist
of multiple legs. It is common practice to allow some period of time between when a customer
has reserved a complete journey and when they actually have to complete the purchase. IBM
PRRS enables you to set this time value to meet your needs. If a customer does not complete
the purchase of the trip in the specified time, IBM PRRS automatically returns the reserved
seats to the inventory to be purchased by someone else. This method allows you to provide
convenience and flexibility to your customers, while allowing you to optimize your capacity.
IBM PRRS also has support for automatic reaccommodation of reservations in the event that
there is a disruption or change in the service that is being provided. For example, when you
change your schedule and have people who have already made reservations based on the
old schedule. In situations where reservations cannot be rebooked, the PNR is set aside for
manual handling.
Beyond the creation of reservations, IBM PRRS provides the ability to modify and cancel
reservations. IBM PRRS provides a facility to help automate the extraction of PNRs for past
journeys, providing a steady flow of valuable information that can be archived and fed into
business analytics and optimization platform, helping you to understand demand and to
optimize functions such as pricing and capacity. You can use IBM Cognos® to help provide
insight through detailed reports and executive dashboards. IBM SPSS can provide
sophisticated analytics capabilities, and you can use IBM DB2® Universal Database™, Data
Warehouse Edition as the foundation to integrate multiple sources of operational business
data.
Seat assignment is another important feature of IBM PRRS and part of the booking process.
Similar to inventory, the seat assignment process supports a physical assignment; the
dedication of a seat to a fixed use. This function is most commonly used by rail operator
personnel or security people.
IBM PRRS can also assign attributes to any physical seat location, which can limit the use of
the seat to a specific type of user (for example, a government official). During the seat
selection process, a seat with this attribute will only be used when the matching attribute is
11
provided by the requestor. Seat attributes are used when the physical location of the seat
matters, such as for security reasons, leaving the majority of seats available for IBM PRRS to
assign based on seat selection optimizations. For example, IBM PRRS provides the ability to
assign a seat “near to” another passenger. This function is an advanced function to place a
passenger as close as possible to a specific seat assignment.
Seat selection optimization contained in IBM PRRS can have a direct impact on your
business by providing optimization for short segments. In a train that is traveling a route of
A-B-C-D, you need to keep a number of seats available for passengers traveling from, say,
A-D. The longer the train line and the more numerous the stops, the bigger the challenge
becomes. A suboptimal seat assignment for shorter segments can result in leaving only a few
seats available for longer trips. For example, IBM PRRS keeps track of a seat sold for A-B and
then prioritizes the reuse of that same seat from B onwards for subsequent seat assignment
requests. All of these conditions, such as a usage attribute, the customer preference
(characteristic), a “near to” request, and the reuse of a short segment seat, are taken into
account on a seat assignment request with IBM PRRS. You can set the priority of these
conditions based on your own business needs.
Lastly, IBM PRRS provides a set of Web services, referred to in Figure 4 on page 10 as
Management Services, that are used by operations staff to perform tasks such as suspending
train services, getting passenger manifests for a particular train, manually handling
reaccommodations, altering quotas, and locating PNRs associated with particular seats.
These Management Services provide a means to alter aspects of your operations in real time.
With this approach, you can use IBM PRRS in a way that is aligned to how you want to run
your passenger rail system.
IBM PRRS provides you with a core set of workload optimized capabilities, not trivial in their
functionality by any means. You can use the building blocks provided in IBM PRRS to rapidly
create a complete passenger rail reservation system that is flexible and tightly aligned to how
you want to run your business.
Summary
High speed rail has provided the impetus for passenger rail systems to compete with air
travel. This situation is forcing rail companies worldwide to reexamine how their reservation
systems are positioned in response to the demands of an ever changing business
environment.
IBM has responded to this challenge with the introduction of IBM PRRS, which can be used
as the foundation of a completely new reservation system or a component to help accelerate
the modernization of existing reservation and ticketing solutions.
IBM PRRS provides core reservation system capabilities through service orientation that can
reduce time to value in providing innovative services to your customers and partners.
Because it is an industry-specific and workload-optimized offering, IBM PRRS can reduce
ongoing reservation system operation and maintenance costs. IBM PRRS is a core asset of
the reservation system modernization domain in the IBM Travel and Transportation Industry
Framework.
Through the IBM support of the creation of innovative standards for the passenger rail
industry, IBM PRRS is well positioned to allow you to take advantage of IBM software,
systems, and services, as well as, the services and offerings provided by IBM business
partners and ISVs. These key attributes of the IBM PRRS offering make it a powerful
foundational building block for creating a smarter railroad.
12
IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service
Other resources for more information
For additional information, refer to the following resources:
򐂰 The smarter railroad: An opportunity for the railroad industry, IBM Institute for Business
Value, 2009:
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/fcgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=PM&subtype=XB&appname=
GBSE_GB_TI_USEN&htmlfid=GBE03201USEN&attachment=GBE03201USEN.PDF
򐂰 IBM Travel and Transportation Framework for railroads
ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/pdfs/SWB14025_USEN-00_TTF_Rail.
pdf
򐂰 IBM Travel and Transportation Software Solutions web site:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/industry/transportation/
򐂰 IBM z/Transaction Processing Facility: Overview and Enterprise Integration using SOA,
REDP-4611
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/redp4611.html
򐂰 Open Travel Alliance web site:
http://www.opentravel.org/
The team who wrote this guide
This guide was produced by a specialist working with the International Technical Support
Organization (ITSO).
Barry Baker is a Business Development and Product Manager in the IBM Software Group.
He is responsible for assessing what markets IBM should compete in, determining gaps in the
IBM portfolio, and partnering with customers, sales, marketing, services, development and
analysts to formulate and execute on product roadmaps and strategies for the Transaction
Processing Facility (TPF) Family of Products. He has over 11 years of experience working on
the design, development, support, test, and strategy of the TPF Family of Products and
regularly meets with C-level and line of business executives of the TPF customer set.
Jonathan Collins is a Product Line Manager for the Transaction Processing Facility (TPF),
z/TPF, and Airline Control System (ALCS) products in IBM Software Group. He is responsible
for financial management, acquisitions, pricing, marketing, new business opportunities,
partnerships, strategy, and product direction. Jonathan has over 9 years of experience
working in the TPF organization, ranging from product development, executive customer
interfacing, and project management.
Connie Walberg is a Product Line Manager in IBM Software Group. She is responsible for
the Enterprise Platform Software (EPS) Industries family of products which includes z/TPF
and Passenger Rail Reservation Service. She has 27 years with IBM, 19 in Sales and
Distribution and 8 with the Software Group. She has spent most of her career dealing with
Travel and Transportation Industry customers. She graduated from the University of South
Dakota with a double major in math and computer science.
Dan Weber is a Senior IT Architect in IBM Software Group and is the lead architect for the
Travel and Transportation Framework. He has over 20 years experience as a software
engineer and lead architect for various travel and transportation industry solutions on a
variety of platforms. He obtained his Bachelor of Computer Science degree in Switzerland.
13
Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:
Colette Manoni
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Passenger Rail Reservation Service Architect
Viswanath Srikanth
IBM SWG Industry Solution Standards for Transportation & Education Lead
Carla Sadtler
International Technical Support Organization, Raleigh Center
LindaMay Patterson
International Technical Support Organization, Rochester Center
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